Houston Cougars open conference schedule Thursday night

Ed Oliver (10) and the rest of the Cougar defense will look to produce a lot of noise from TDECU Stadium.

Scott W. Coleman

Posted
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 1:12 pm

By Cole McNanna sports@sealynews.com

With a revolving door at the quarterback spot for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, Heisman-trophy candidate Ed Oliver could have a field day Thursday night in Houston’s conference opener on ESPN.

After last week’s 31-17 defeat at Temple University, Tulsa Head Coach Phillip Montgomery announced the starting quarterback position was up for grabs following a five-turnover performance from Luke Skipper who won the job over the summer.

According to reporters covering the Hurricane, signs have been pointing to a redshirt freshman from Collinsville, OK named Seth Boomer being the next man up.

Tulsa won its first game of the season but has since dropped its last three although only by an average margin of 10 points. However, the team has also committed the same amount of turnovers (13) through those first four games than they did over all 12 games last year.

And now the next stop for the Golden Hurricane is the home of the player who is already one of the top draft prospects making the run at a Heisman from the defensive side of the ball that has only been completed by Charles Woodson.

Although he is only a junior, Oliver has already declared for the draft and is already being looked at as one of the top picks before he’s even played a game in the American Athletic Conference.

Through the Cougars’ first four games, he has yet to record a sack but has registered seven quarterback hits and five tackles for a net loss of 14 yards.

He will look to anchor the defense that started hot out of the gates with wins over Rice and Arizona but soon found a buzz saw in Texas Tech who scored 63 points to hand Houston its first loss of the season. A bounce-back blowout of Texas Southern (70-14) led into the short week with a primetime conference-matchup on national television.

The Cougars and Golden Hurricane have a deep history of competition and the team from Texas holds only a slight advantage at 23-19 in the overall record books.

Since 2005 though, Houston holds an 8-4 lead that also includes last year’s win in favor of Tulsa, its only win inside the conference, which came at a 45-17 thrashing of the visiting Cougars almost an entire year prior to the next meeting.

Oct. 14, 2017, the Golden Hurricane earned one of their two wins on the entire season over the Houston team that finished second in the AAC.

Thus far, the Cougars have defended their home stadium with a 2-0 record and on the other side of the coin; Tulsa has yet to win on the road in either of its initial pair of chances.

All of the stats and words will cease at 7 p.m. Thursday night when the two teams kickoff to open their conference schedules at TDECU Stadium.